The new bobblehead from Dr. Anthony Fauci is able to answer only yes or no. The real Anthony Fauci has to deal with questions that, even moths in this pandemic, feel very unanswerable.
This week, Fauci talks to medical companies, news outlets, and Matthew Followers on Instagram followers about a series of hot Covid-19 questions. Here’s Fauci on the question of whether we should mandate a vaccine, how long it takes to recover from a mild case of coronavirus, what happens to the body after Covid-19, and more.
As a public service Inverse regularly collects Fauci’s comments in the “Fauci Dispatch” series, as the White House has limited its visibility to the public.
- Read here the Fauci Dispatch of 13 August 2020
- Read here the Fauci Dispatch of 5 August 2020
- Read here the Fauci Dispatch of July 29, 2020
- Read here the Fauci Dispatch of July 22, 2020
Fauci on Mandating a Fax – In an interview with Healthline on Tuesday, Fauci answered questions about whether the Covid-19 vaccine would be mandated for the general public.
“I do not think you will ever see a mandate of faxing,” Fauci said.
The background – State and city governments technically have the power to mandate a person to receive a vaccine or be subject to a fine (New York City did so to combat measles in 2019).
However, the FDA, which has licensed vaccines, does not have that authority. The closest thing to a true vaccination requirement for the general public is a vaccination requirement for school enrollment – although many states still allow medical and “non-medical” exemptions that enrollment may continue.
Non-medical exemptions for vaccines have caused significant controversy and, in part, the recurrence of disease incidence. Before the outbreak of knives in 2019, scientists were able to determine communities where non-medical exemptions for faxes were particularly high – such as Portland, Oregon. In 2019, measles swept through such communities after decades of little activity in the United States, raising the question of whether we should ban non-medical exemptions. Only five states have banned all exemptions for non-medical faxes: New York, Maine, Mississippi, California, and West Virginia.
“I do not think you will ever see a mandate of faxing.”
Despite the breadth of the coronavirus pandemic, Fauci’s comments suggest that we are unlikely to see a change in vaccine policy – but it is possible that there may be exceptions. For example, healthcare professionals treating patients with the disease may need the vaccine to enter the Covid-19 wards.
Importantly, most people plan to get the Covid-19 vaccine on their own, without a mandate. Polls suggest that about two-thirds of Americans would get the vaccine. For those who are unsure, there are ways to run that conversation instead of policies that have yet to materialize (and probably never will).
Fauci on the Long Road to Recovery – Speaking to the American Society for Microbiology, Fauci pointed out that the road to recovery from Covid-19 may not be easy, even for young adults.
“In people who are young and otherwise healthy, who do not need hospitalization, but become sick and symptomatic enough to be in bed for a week or two or three and then get better, they remove the virus – they have weeks of remaining symptoms and sometimes months, ”Fauci said.
The background – Scientists are still untangling how the recovery process Covid-19 looks for people who get a mild form of the disease.
Several patients with mild illness reported Inverse in June that she “never expected that recovery would follow.” In the United Kingdom and Italy, government health authorities have set up Covid-19 rehab institutes for those experiencing longer recovery times.
A CDC survey in July confirmed that some people look longer than expected returns to health. Of the 274 symptomatic patients surveyed, the team found that 35 percent did not feel normal by the time they were interviewed, a median of 16 days after testing positive. These symptoms include cough (experienced by 43 percent of people), fatigue (35 percent), and shortness of breath (29 percent). A study in Italy found that 87.4 percent of 143 hospital patients had persistent symptoms, mostly fatigue, months after leaving the hospital.
As Fauci noted in his interview, young people can also experience longer recovery times. Twenty-six percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 did not feel normal when they were interviewed by the CDC.
Fauci on the effects of Covid-19 on the body – Also at the briefing with the American Society of Microbiology, Fauci spoke about the long-term effects of Covid-19 on the body, even for people with mild cases.
“I will guarantee you that once we have this conversation resumed, from six months to a year from now, we will review the literature on conversations about the long-term devastating effects of patients not being in the hospital,” he continued.
The background – The new coronavirus is treated as a respiratory disease, but it affects many different tissues in the body. One place that draws increased medical attention is the heart.
In July, a study was published in JAMA Cardiology showed that the disease was linked to damaging cardiovascular changes. Scientists compared MRIs of the hearts of 100 people with and without coronavirus and found that 60 of those patients showed signs of inflammation, even if they had no pre-existing condition.
Explanation of this study in a New York Times op-ed, Harvard cardiologist Haider Warraich notes that the study was not perfect, but that there also appear to be anecdotal reports of myocarditis associated with Covid-19, as inflammation of the heart muscle. Specifically, he points to five infected college footballers who have signs of myocarditis.
It is not uncommon for a virus to cause inflammation of the heart – myocarditis can also be caused by flu viruses. Even if it is rare, it poses a risk to athletes who push their heart hard, especially college athletes who may be more at risk when reopening schools. In a call Aug. 13, NCAA chief medical officer sei that between one and two percent of fellow athletes tested positive for Covid-19 and at least 12 were later found to have myocarditis.
Fauci on recovery from plasma therapy – Since April, there have been ongoing clinical studies investigating whether convalescent plasma legs of recovered Covid-19 patients may be useful as treatment for severe and non-severe cases.
Fauci has regularly discussed convalescent plasma wires as a possible way to treat patients before they need to go to the hospital. “That’s really what convalescent plasma is,” he said during a White House Round Table on Plasma Donation in late July.
The background – Promising but still incomplete trials on conquering plasma in China suggested it could be effective. However, in the absence of a randomized, controlled clinical trial, scientists do not yet know if this method really works. Recently, a pre-printed paper (not peer-reviewed) from the Mayo Clinic’s large-scale convalescent plasma study suggested that it may be useful for serious patients and has been shown to reduce mortality rates.
That said, the Mayo Clinic study reports only partial results of the trial. The FDA’s initial plan to provide emergency use authorization allowing regular convalescent plasma treatment to be used has now been halted, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Fauci, like Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and H. Clifford Lane, the clinical director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are checking the data again.
“The three of us are pretty attuned to the importance of robust data through randomized control tests, and that a pandemic that does not change,” Lane said.
